


Heaven Beside Me (Hell Within)

by Aedemiel



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a bit of a bastard, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fluff, Fluff and Angst, God (Maybe) - Freeform, Hearing Voices, Heaven, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hell, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Oblivious, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Oblivious Crowley (Good Omens), Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22759588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aedemiel/pseuds/Aedemiel
Summary: Agnes had left other prophecies addressed to Aziraphale:5002 Be not distracted by beasts but be true to thine hart, angel. Lette not the serpent’s tongue beguile thee, for he hath trespassed against thee and himfelf as much as ye hath done also.Aziraphale doesn't know what this means. Aziraphale is an idiot. So is Crowley. And Heaven are just outright bastards.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Kudos: 11





	1. The Animals Went In One by One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale contemplates his situation after the Armageddon that wasn't and stumbles into some strange animal metaphors (but no snakes).

**Aziraphale**

The trouble with fighting to prevent Armageddon, according to Aziraphale, is that one never gets time to just sit down and think. To absorb the events that have occurred because they’re all piled up on top of each other like a stack of the world’s least appetizing pancakes.

He could really go for some pancakes right now.

It was late, or rather, it was very, very early. Three o’clock in the morning, the witching hour. Prime demon time, although in his case there was no demonic activity to be found. He hadn’t seen Crowley in a couple of days. He missed the demon’s presence but he suspected he needed his space as much as Aziraphale did. And anyway, if Crowley had been there, he wouldn’t have had this time to chew over everything in his head that he needed to resolve.

So, would he start with the elephant in the room? Probably better described as a  _ T. rex _ really. There was also a rhino and a giraffe. Aziraphale wondered how this metaphor had gotten so off track as to put an entire zoo in his bookshop.

He sipped at his tea[1] and chewed at his lip, unsure where to even start. Not at the beginning, y’know, _ T. rex.  _ And not at the end, the rhino that represented his feelings about Heaven. So, the giraffe. God, this was stupid but he was stuck with it now.

The giraffe, in Aziraphale’s somewhat confused mind, was Agnes Nutter. Or rather, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. The book itself was long gone, to Aziraphale’s eternal regret. But like most angels, he had an eidetic memory and so could peruse the verses at leisure, matching them back to various historical events. That wasn’t the thing that bothered him; no, he’d have fun with that later. It was the lie he had told Crowley.

The piece of paper he’d snagged from the destruction of the book in that final showdown had contained not one prophecy but two. Upon realizing the nature of the first one, he’d separated it from the second and showed only that one to Crowley. The verse that had been the warning that had saved both of their lives when Upstairs and Downstairs had sought to destroy them.  _ Oh sh...sugar. The rhino. Get back to the giraffe. _

He’d never lied to the demon before[2]. Not that he was supposed to be lying at all but because Crowley was a demon, it was probably all right.  _ Was Crowley a demon anymore? Am I still an angel? Rhino, rhino! _

The prophecy was this:

**5002 Be not distracted by beasts but be true to thine hart, angel. Lette not the serpent’s tongue beguile thee, for he hath trespassed against thee and himfelf as much as ye hath done also.**

Aziraphale had no idea what that meant, although the serpent almost certainly referred to Crowley. The reference to his tongue probably implied that Crowley was lying to him, which would hardly be a surprise. The strange shivery feeling he got when thinking about Crowley’s tongue was surely just his ethereal essence objecting to the demon’s wiles. Er. But the passage as a whole was confusing. 

He wondered vaguely if Agnes had envisioned his zoo metaphor. He hoped not, but it did make a sort of sense. A bit. Oh, never mind. He wasn’t getting anywhere with this. 

So, on to the rhino. Heaven had forsaken him as easily as Hell had condemned Crowley. Gabriel had summarily ordered his execution by the most excruciating method possible and had seemed positively gleeful about it, according to Crowley. Where was the forgiveness, the charity, the  _ mercy _ that embodied Heavenly virtues? Had his crime really been so dreadful that he could be given no chance at redemption? His eyes pricked with tears and he had to take a few deep breaths before returning to his reflections. He couldn’t avoid thinking about this any longer, it was festering in his mind and threatening to poison his soul and his relationship with Crowley.  _ Leave the T.rex alone. Get back to the rhino. _

He was hated. By Gabriel, by Uriel, by Michael and by Sandalphon[3].  _ Hated. _ That’s where he got stuck. Crowley had described, of the three who were present, a vicious, malign hatred that had glimmered in their eyes. Aziraphale was glad he hadn’t been there to see it. 

Hell had shown him less revulsion; to be honest, Beelzebub had been more irritated and bored than anything else. And Hastur had hated Crowley’s guts long before the end of the world. Crowley had crossed the line, but crossing lines was kind of demonic too. Anyway, Hell was supposed to want Armageddon, it wasn’t a revelation to Crowley that they did. But Aziraphale had always thought Heaven would not. He had believed that he had been working to prevent the Apocalypse. 

Would Heaven ever welcome him back? He doubted it unless there was a major change in upper management. God had let him live, had given him the means to do so, but whether he actually met with Her approval he didn’t know. And that meant he wasn’t sure about whether he and Crowley…  _ T.rex!!! _

So, an angel untethered from Heaven then. Not Fallen, not as far as he could tell. His wings were still white and pristine, his essence untouched. Neither had Crowley Unfallen[4]. The demon called it freedom. Aziraphale called it limited emancipation because he had no doubt Heaven would yank on the chain around his neck one day in the future. 

How did he reconcile this? A six thousand-year-old lie[5]. His entire existence was based on deceit. There was a God, but Heaven was no paradise. Paradise was to be found here, on Earth. He would not have believed it two weeks ago.

_ Two weeks. _ Two weeks in which his entire world had been turned upside down. All he had left were his simple earthly pleasures; food and books and Cr--  _ Nope _ . In truth, it had been all he’d ever wanted. Heaven’s errands and demands were the flies, not the sugar bowl. 

And now he had everything he ever wanted. Mostly. Except for the  _ T.rex. _

1A lovely rooibos blend with hints of chai spices he’d found in Canada of all places.[return to text]

2 Well, not about anything important. [return to text]

3OK, the last one was a given even before this whole mess.[return to text]

4Was that a word? It is now.[return to text]

5There’s another one as well, but that’s the  _ T.rex’s  _ left arm or something.[return to text]


	2. One for Sorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley tries to give Aziraphale some space and has trouble distracting himself.

**Crowley**

The executive apartment[6] had never felt so empty. There was still the faint scent of melted Ligur in the air and the scattered remains of the astronomy books he’d used to contemplate his escape from the Apocalypse with Aziraphale. 

Except the angel hadn’t wanted to go. Not with him, at any rate. It was OK[7], it had turned out better than he could ever have dreamed of. For the most part. There wasn’t as much Aziraphale in his life since the world hadn’t ended, but the angel needed space to cope with what had happened. 

_You go too fast for me, Crowley,_ he’d once said and it still haunted Crowley more than fifty years later. So he’d backed off rather than do what he wanted to do, which was sit in the angel’s bookshop and drink to blot it all out. Instead, he was left to wander about his flat, yelling half-heartedly at the plants and trying unsuccessfully to sleep. 

As a second-best option, sleep was appealing. But he’d lain on his bed, tossing and turning but unable to quiet his rioting mind. He’d even tried a few more outlandish places to rest; on the floor, on the ceiling and up against a wall.

The wall had been the worst. Memory pressed against his skin, sweet breath on his tongue, ragged breathing in his ears. He needed to forget. Forget how it had felt, pressed against Aziraphale in Tadfield Manor, growling in his face but tempted, so tempted, to put his mouth to another use. He needed to forget, Aziraphale was a friend and that friendship was precious to him. He wasn’t going to muck it up by trying to turn it into something else. The trouble was demons, like the angels they used to be, can’t forget anything. The best Crowley could do was bury it as deep as possible and try and avoid the triggers that brought it to the surface. 

But that left him with a very painful decision. To truly bury the memories of things he must not yearn for, he would need to avoid the target of that desire. Aziraphale. _Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,_ Shakespeare had said. Crappy play but that line stuck out for him. He wasn’t even sure it was real, what he felt. Maybe fear of the oncoming apocalypse, the stress of scrambling to fix his blunder and a flash of temper had pushed him over a line he should never have crossed. 

He wasn’t going to wonder how Aziraphale had felt about being shoved up against a wall, snarling demon in his face. Nor was he going to think about the look on the angel’s face. A little surprised but not afraid. Not even uncomfortable, now that he thought about it. Which he was _not_ supposed to be doing.

He needed a distraction. Unlike Aziraphale, his condemnation by Hell was expected, his escape astonishing but much appreciated, so he had no soul searching to do. _Well done, Agnes,_ he thought. _Thank you._ A flutter of another memory appeared and he plucked it from the ephemera of his mind before it disappeared. A small fragment of Agnes’s book, dancing in the air and seized by Aziraphale. The prophecy that had saved their lives. 

The strange thing was, he remembered it being larger when the angel had caught it. Later, when they’d examined it, there was only one verse, the warning to ‘ _choofe your faces wisely_ ’. Funny. He could have sworn there was room for more before. 

OK, time to move on. That was not the distraction he needed. Perhaps he should go out. Maybe a little temptation would cheer him up. Temptation of a human that is, not tempting himself.

He roamed the streets of London, ending up at Tottenham Court Road underground station where he fixed all the barriers to wipe the credit off everyone’s Oyster cards. That made him smile for a while as he felt the ripples of annoyance and anger that spread out across the city with the waves of commuters heading in all directions. 

_Tottenham Court Road. Dammit._ Just a few minutes from Soho, from Aziraphale’s bookshop and refuge. He bit his lip and determinedly walked in the other direction, towards Regent’s Park. This gave him a few more opportunities for mischief, gently encouraging some teenagers to start chasing each other through the park, crashing into other people and tripping over their dogs. A small child nearby had his ice cream smashed to the ground by the chaos and he started to wail. A magpie flew down and started to feast on the remains.

“Mikey, I can’t buy you another one,” his mother told him. “I’m sorry, baby, but I don’t have any money left and the ice cream man doesn’t take credit cards.”

The deplorable insufficiency of modern financial transactions at the ice cream cart was lost on little Mikey. And the tears of a distraught child and the tired frustration of his mother tugged on the heartstrings that Crowley definitely didn’t have. He sauntered over to the cart, bought a replacement and went over to the pair.

“Here,” he said, handing the ice cream to the boy, who looked up at him with adoring eyes. 

“That’s very kind of you,” the woman said gratefully.

“Nah,” Crowley said. “I was just passing, that’s all.” The magpie’s black-eyed stare seemed accusatory. He shooed it away and ambled off, kicking himself for being such a soft touch. The image of an approving Aziraphale floated before his eyes before he swiped it away. 

6As the literature had described the flat when he bought it.

7 It really wasn’t but demons weren’t supposed to be hurt by rejection.


End file.
